The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum announces its newest featured exhibit: Grateful Dead: The Long, Strange Trip

CLEVELAND (January 19, 2012) - The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is proud to present a major exhibition devoted to a truly unique American rock and roll band, Grateful Dead: The Long, Strange Trip. The exhibit will open to the public on Thursday, April 12, as a part of the 2012 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Week events and is sponsored by McIntosh.

“The Grateful Dead is a band that is identified with a remarkable era in American history, and, inasmuch as they embody that era, their work is timeless,” says Jim Henke, vice president of Exhibits and Curatorial Affairs. “They’ve inspired many performers and bands, but none has exhibited their musical depth and cultural resonance. In a 30-year career, this group wrote their own rules and created a community unlike any band before or since.”

Grateful Dead: The Long, Strange Trip explores the band from a non-linear point of view. Individual sections within the exhibit will be devoted to Grateful Dead as a recording group and a touring band, the fans who devotedly followed them, tapers and fellow travelers (people who were important to the band). It will include finished and working manuscripts for classic songs, handwritten notes from legendary taper Dick Latvala, artifacts from original sound designer Owsley “Bear” Stanley, and promoter Bill Graham’s Father Time robe and Grateful Dead Hotline answering machine.

Art and design have always been closely associated with Grateful Dead, and this exhibit will include an unprecedented collection of original artwork that is immediately recognizable from the band’s album covers and posters. It will feature numerous instruments used by the Grateful Dead over the years, including keyboards, drums, percussion, guitars and elements from the legendary Wall of Sound PA system. The Grateful Dead Archive at the University of California-Santa Cruz has loaned a significant number of items from their extraordinary collection, which will open to the public in Spring 2012.

Additional highlights include:

· Five Jerry Garcia guitars, including his Travis Bean TB5· Mickey Hart’s custom-painted drum kit· Two Bob Weir guitars, including his first Ibanez “cowboy” custom guitar· Several original lyric manuscripts, including “Truckin’,” “Box of Rain” and “Sugaree”· Several original Grateful Dead-related artworks, including images from Workingman’s Dead, Without a Net and Fillmore Auditorium poster art· Bill Graham’s “Father Time” robe

Formed in Palo Alto, California, in 1965 from a previous incarnation as a bar band called the Warlocks, the Grateful Dead were at the epicenter of the sweeping cultural event that was San Francisco in the Sixties. Their music was informed by a diverse set of influences – contemporary classical composition, bluegrass, rhythm & blues, free jazz, rock and roll and the blues. Fueled by a cultural underground of writers, poets and bohemians that stretched from Oakland and Berkeley in the East Bay to Palo Alto on the peninsula, the Grateful Dead developed an ethos that embraced true artistic pursuits over commercial concerns, improvisation over rote arrangements and mind expansion through the use of psychedelic drugs.

The Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame and Museum has teamed with the Grateful Dead and Rhino Entertainment on an exclusive line of merchandise around the exhibit. The items, which will be sold exclusively at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, will include apparel, accessories, and other items featuring iconic Grateful Dead imagery.

This exhibit will be open through December 2012.

About McIntosh

Since the introduction of its first hi-fi audio amplifier in 1949, McIntosh Laboratory has continued to design and manufacture advanced home entertainment system solutions that define the very best in performance, reliability and musical accuracy, providing discerning consumers with the ultimate music listening experience. The exceptional quality and longevity of McIntosh products, as well as the powerful and immersive McIntosh experience, all derive from a design philosophy and manufacturing process unparalleled in the industry.

McIntosh handcrafts all of its products at its factory in upstate Binghamton, NY. There are no mass production lines and no robot assembly plant. Each McIntosh product is literally an artistic creation, providing a powerful music listening experience, combined with the ultimate in high style and elegant design. The company’s commitment to perfectionism and passion for music has earned it a singular reputation in the music world, with a devoted following among many of the world’s most renowned musicians, from Les Paul to the Grateful Dead, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, LA Reid, Rob Thomas, John Mayer and many others.

Excellence is the common goal shared by the dedicated staff at McIntosh. From engineering to production each employee, whose skills have been honed through years of on-the-job experience, provides the foundation for McIntosh's continued success.As a result, thousands of McIntosh owners throughout the world have described McIntosh products with two words: ultimate quality.

Today, McIntosh is looking toward the future with the same dedication to excellence and innovation that has always defined the company and its people. The company’s new systems reflect both its longstanding heritage as a singular “prestige” audio company and its continued commitment to exploring and refining the most advanced home entertainment technologies to create an ever-evolving “McIntosh experience” for the 21st century.

Reliability, longevity, craftsmanship, adaptability, ease-of-use and pride of ownership. The choice becomes clear. By design, there is nothing like a McIntosh.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Inc. is the nonprofit organization that exists to educate visitors, fans and scholars from around the world about the history and continuing significance of rock and roll music. It carries out this mission through its operation of a world-class museum that collects, preserves, exhibits and interprets this art form and through its library and archives as well as its educational programs.

The Museum is open seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. On Wednesdays (and Saturdays through Labor Day), the Museum is open until 9 p.m. Museum admission is $22 for adults, $18 for adult residents of Greater Cleveland, $17 for seniors (65+), $13 for youth (9-12). Children under eight (8) and museum members always free, for information or to join the membership program call 216. 515.8425. For general inquiries, please call 216.781.ROCK (7625) or visit www.rockhall.com. The Museum is generously funded by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.